Schmidt Killed the Medical Device Tax

Schmidt Public Affairs LLC is an independent healthcare-specialized public affairs firm founded in 2004. The firm operates at the intersection of healthcare policy, regulatory communications, and advocacy infrastructure, anchoring a roster of providers, patient-coalition clients, and medical-device and therapeutic-area accounts.

Founded	2004
Status	Independent
Specialty	Healthcare public affairs, regulatory communications, advocacy
Service Lines	Advocacy, crisis communications, digital and social, strategy and research
Website	schmidtpa.com

Overview

Schmidt Public Affairs built its book around the healthcare sector — provider organizations, patient-advocacy coalitions, medical-device companies, and therapeutic-area accounts. The firm operates inside one of the most regulated communications environments in the U.S. economy, where federal and state policy work intersects with FDA pathway communications, CMS reimbursement, and the broader healthcare-coverage debate.

Schmidt sits inside EPR's Public Affairs & Political Communications pillar and the Healthcare PR pillar as one of the independent specialist firms anchoring the healthcare-public-affairs operating environment.

Services

Advocacy

Schmidt's advocacy capability covers facility tours, advocacy training and tools, online advocacy, messaging, event management, and coalition management. The firm's coalition-management work — multi-stakeholder advocacy infrastructure across patient organizations, providers, and policy validators — is a core operating capability for the healthcare-public-affairs segment.

Crisis Communications

Healthcare-specific crisis work runs across regulatory enforcement, FDA-pathway disputes, reimbursement controversies, and the broader provider-reputation environment. Schmidt's capability includes crisis planning, messaging, media training, online reputation management, response planning, and ongoing reputation work.

Digital and Social Media

The firm's digital service covers social advertising campaigns, social media training, web design and development, SEO and SEM, blog production, and platform-policy work. Healthcare-specific digital work operates inside the constraints of patient-privacy regulation (HIPAA), FDA promotional rules, and platform-level restrictions on healthcare advertising.

Strategy and Research

Schmidt's strategy service includes research, messaging, brand development, communications assessments, strategic planning and counsel, and communication planning.

Notable Campaigns

The Medical Device Tax Repeal

Schmidt anchored multi-year advocacy against the federal medical device excise tax, which had diverted billions in industry capital from research and development to tax compliance. Working with leading think tanks, the firm released a whitepaper explaining the policy's effects on medical innovation, which became the basis for content distributed to patient advocates before Capitol Hill meetings. The campaign engaged both conservative and liberal thought leaders, building bipartisan emotive arguments for repeal. The result: more than 200 bipartisan members of Congress supported a full repeal — a structurally consequential public-affairs outcome at the intersection of healthcare policy and tax policy.

The Kidney Care Community

Repositioning the Kidney Care Community involved Schmidt running strategic digital campaigns to ensure that policymakers were abreast of progress in kidney care over the preceding decade. The strategic campaigns emphasized the case for administration-and-Congress collaboration on patient-outcome improvements. The advertisements reached more than 11.2 million impressions inside the Washington, D.C., policymaker audience. The firm also placed an op-ed in an inside-the-Beltway publication emphasizing the importance of collaboration to advance kidney care.

The Healthcare Public Affairs Operating Environment

Healthcare is one of the highest-stakes public affairs environments in the U.S. economy. Federal regulators (FDA, CMS, HHS, NIH) and state regulators (state insurance commissioners, state health departments, state attorneys general operating in pharmaceutical pricing and antitrust matters) operate inside multi-stakeholder policy cycles that play out over multi-year horizons. Specialist firms like Schmidt compete against generalist holding-company subsidiaries by offering deeper sector relationships, more sustained advocacy infrastructure, and category-specific operating muscle the holdcos cannot match without dedicated investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Schmidt Public Affairs?
An independent healthcare-specialized public affairs firm founded in 2004. The firm operates across healthcare policy, regulatory communications, advocacy, and crisis work for provider organizations, patient-advocacy coalitions, medical-device companies, and therapeutic-area accounts.

Is Schmidt Public Affairs independent?
Yes. Schmidt operates as an independent firm, not affiliated with the major holding companies. Independence is a structural advantage in healthcare public affairs work where conflicts across pharmaceutical, device, payer, and provider accounts are constraint-level concerns inside the major holdcos.

What notable campaigns has Schmidt led?
The Medical Device Tax repeal advocacy (resulting in more than 200 bipartisan Congressional members supporting full repeal) and the Kidney Care Community repositioning (more than 11.2 million Washington-policymaker impressions plus inside-the-Beltway op-ed placement) are two of the firm's documented public-affairs case studies.

How does healthcare public affairs differ from corporate or government-relations public affairs?
Healthcare public affairs operates inside a denser regulatory environment than most sectors, with the FDA, CMS, NIH, HHS, state insurance commissioners, and state attorneys general all operating substantive enforcement and policy programs. The multi-stakeholder operating environment — providers, payers, patient organizations, manufacturers, regulators — requires sustained coalition infrastructure rather than single-cycle campaigns.

The Public Affairs & Political Communications Cluster

Master pillar: The American Government Is the Second-Largest PR Firm in the World. Related coverage in the firm-profile tier:

• McGuireWoods Consulting
• Margery Kraus and APCO Worldwide
• APCO Worldwide
• Harbour Group
• Tuffin for D.C. Leadership
• Public Affairs and Political Communications — The Discipline and the AI Communications Era
• PR Agency Profiles Directory

---

Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.